The Vision

There’s a big vision behind The City, and it comes from the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:14-16. It’s a vision of technology being leveraged to help the Church live as a city set on a hill, shining the light of the Gospel to the whole world.

It began with a vision of the Church as a city on a hill, shining the light of Christ to the world around it.

To understand The City, it's important to know where it came from and the direction it's going. It’s important to know that The City started out as a pastor's prayerful response to an urgent need in his church. It didn't begin with a marketing plan, it began with a vision of the Church as a city on a hill, shining the light of Christ to the world around it.

It's about movement, not management.

As the new Pastor of Technology at a church in Seattle, Zack Hubert set out to find a way to harness technology to serve the church. He found numerous options for church management, for helping administrators with things like budgets and attendance records, but there was nothing built specifically for helping the body — the people of the church — do the work of ministry.

Taking time away to pray for direction, the concept of The City came to Zack as he meditated on Jesus' words in Matthew 5:14, "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden." Drawing on his experience as a systems architect for Amazon, he set out to create a group-centered social network that would be all about encouraging church movement by making it easier for people to become connected, build deeper community, and be empowered to serve each other, their neighbors, and the world with the love of Jesus.

And so, The City was born, and as it has grown, so has the vision.

Even at this very moment, The City is helping people in hundreds of churches grow deeper in community and stay engaged in the kind of whole-life ministry that shines as a light in the darkness.

For our part, we feel incredibly blessed and grateful to be trusted by so many churches to help them respond in obedience to the call of Jesus, for his glory and the growth of his kingdom. It's what gets us up every morning and what keeps going. (Well, that, and a little of @thecitycoffee now and then doesn’t hurt, either).